BIGGLES FLIES AGAIN

by W. E. Johns

VI. BOB’S BOX (Pages 95 – 109)

A month has passed and our heroes are at Rarotayo (this was where Sandy had his home) with Sandy, when the Sea Eagle comes in. This is a schooner belonging to a Swedish sailor called Sven Ericson. Sven meets Sandy and his friends and they have lunch together. Sven is interested to hear that aeroplanes can be used for submarine spotting and has a proposition for Biggles. He tells the story of Robert McKane and how his schooner, the Southern Star sank. Bob McKane then spent years trying to find the wreck to get back an important box that he had onboard. He died before he was able to do so. Various tales were told about the treasure to be found in Bob’s box. “First it was a bag of pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs; then it was the map of a lost gold mine in the Solomans, and then it was the whereabouts of an old pirate junk loaded with loot – goodness knows what wasn’t in that box at the finish”. Sven says the Southern Star sank in reasonably shallow water. Although it went down after hitting an uncharted reef near Gospel Island, the exact location was not known. If they can use the plane to find the wreck, Sven will get the box and they can split the profit. Biggles agrees but says they need to run down to Australia first for a complete overhaul of their aircraft. He agrees to meet Sven at Gospel Island in six weeks’ time. “I’m positively aching to know what’s inside that box,” declared Algy. The story then continues with our heroes leaning over the rail of the Sea Eagle watching diving operations. Things had gone according to plan and the wreck of the Southern Star had been located on the second day of looking for her “some miles south of the reef that had sent her to the bottom, which probably explained why the others had failed to discover her”. Ericson’s schooner had arrived and the diver had gone over the side, to return with a small barnacle encrusted chest clasped in his arms. Sven breaks it open in his cabin and finds fifty or sixty golden sovereigns and twelve or fifteen good-sized pearls. Bob wouldn’t have spent all his money looking for those. Then he pulls out something in tissue paper. “He raised his eyes to the other and his lips formed the words, “the treasure,” but no sound came”. Suddenly there are urgent cries of alarm from the deck and pandemonium breaks lose. Algy is desperate to know what the treasure is, as Biggles has seen it, but the urgency means there is no time for conversation. A typhoon is approaching and they have to take off extremely urgently. They take off just before the typhoon hits but they are soon caught up in the tremendous winds and blown away, forced to ride the storm for hours. (A spatter of hail-stones struck the machine like bursts of machine-gun bullets … - is the illustration opposite page 108). Eventually, they are able to land in a sheltered backwater and see a Union Jack. Making enquiries as to their location they are told “Fly River, New Guinea. My name’s Davidson, I’m the Resident Magistrate. Come in and have a drink. You another one of these records breakers?” “We’ve just established a record from Gospel Island to here that will take some beating,” says Biggles. Algy still wants to know what was in the box. Biggles tells him. It was a picture. “A little oil painting in a gold frame of a girl – Bob’s wife, I expect. That was his treasure”.